Birthday Boy
by alienheartattack
Summary: Snapshots of Levi's birthdays through the years. Some platonic Rivamika at the end. Originally written for Rivamika Week 2014. COMPLETE


**Zero.**

The night is cold and his mother screams until she is hoarse. "No," she croaks, voice roughened after hours of agony, "it's too soon." But that night's refuge, a decrepit barn on a long since abandoned farm, is far from anyone who will help her. She has no coin to pay any doctor, and she is in no condition to offer her body as she has done so many times before.

So she cries and she pushes until the baby finally emerges, tiny and blue with a full head of black hair. He is small, but he cries with the strength of a baby twice his size. She whispers his name into his hair as he finds her breast and drinks, his cries subsiding into contented whimpers. She cuddles her baby close, swaddling him in a thick blanket as she dozes off, a powerful sluggishness seeping into her limbs.

By the time someone finds him, drawn by his shrill, unceasing cries, his mother is as cold as the snow that lies in thick drifts outside the barn.

**Eight.**

"You fucking brat. Why can't you do anything right?" A scrawny leg and a booted foot come flying and catch him in the ribs. "You could've gotten me arrested."

"I'm sorry, Kenny," Levi groans, coughing. "I didn't know he was a member of the Military Police!"

"You couldn't see the fucking huge fucking unicorn patch on his fucking back, you little shit?"

"No! I was off to his left!"

"That's! No! Excuse!" Kenny grunts, swinging his leg out with each word, catching the boy on his legs, his hand, and then finally connecting with the air as Levi crawls to the corner of the room and huddles there, wrapping skinny arms around skinny legs. A dark shadow of a bruise starts to form on his left calf.

"I'll be back in an hour. You'd better not be here. I'll come find you when I feel like dealing with you again." Kenny spits on the ground in his direction, a gob of saliva landing a fraction of an inch from the boy's feet. "Happy fucking birthday."

Levi recoils, protecting his head with bony forearms, expecting more blows to rain down on him. Instead he hears a soft slap on the ground, then the boom of Kenny's booted footsteps receding, the front door creaking open and slamming shut.

Levi opens his eyes to see a pile of food on the floor. He crawls over to it for a closer look and sees a mangled pile of spongy yellow cake, a smear of white frosting practically glowing against the grimy wooden floor beams. Sighing, he plucks a morsel of cake with two thin fingers and places it between trembling lips.

**Fifteen.**

"Kenny kick you out again? What did you do?" The girl lights a cigarette, breathes in deep through roughened lungs, and exhales a thick plume of acrid smoke.

Levi wrinkles his nose at the foul odor, the burn in his eyes. "Nothing, this time. He scraped up enough coin to get a whore so he told me to get out for the night."

"Does he even know today is your birthday?"

"What does it matter? He's getting some. He'd still kick me out regardless."

"Where are you staying?"

"I'll find a place."

"My dad is working the night shift at the factory if you want to come over. I'll keep you warm."

"I don't think that's a good idea." Her father is a large man who loves his only daughter with the fierce intensity of a man who has nothing else of value in the world.

"You never come around anymore. We only got one night. That's not fair. Let me give you something nice for your birthday, at least."

Levi feels the girl's gaze insistent on the side of his neck and remembers the pressure of her lips against his skin there. He looks away from her, down at his feet. Even under the dim light of the flickering streetlamps overhead, he can detect a hole starting to form in the soft leather of his shoes. "I didn't think you'd want a repeat of that. Even I know I wasn't good," he mumbles.

The girl reaches out one hand and places it flat against Levi's back, rubbing over the protrusions of his ribs and vertebrae. "I could teach you," she purrs. "No one starts off good."

Levi thinks for a moment then steps away, leaving the warmth of her touch. The strange tickling feeling she gives him in the pit of his stomach is unfamiliar and it is nice, but there is no place for such frivolousness in the underground city. "No. It's just one more thing for Kenny to take away from me," he says.

He walks away then, leaving the girl staring after him as his slim figure fades into the snowy night.

**Twenty-five.**

"Take it back," Levi says. "Take it all back." He waves his hand at the lopsided cake before him, unevenly plastered with gobs of runny white icing.

Isabel looks like she is going to cry, red blotches starting to appear on her face as she tries to breathe evenly without sniffling. "But I worked so hard, big brother…"

"You should have turned that flour into bread. And that sugar was for my tea."

"I know it doesn't look like much, but I swear it tastes like a cake from a fancy shop. Better, even!"

"Just eat a piece," Farlan groans from across the room. "She won't shut up until you do."

"Yeah, just eat a piece!" Isabel echoes. "Please, big brother?" she adds in a small, sad voice.

"I'm not hungry," Levi tells her, his words even and measured. He hopes that his stomach does not growl loudly enough for the gang to hear. He is hungry, has been for days, but Levi cares not for sweet things. He prefers depth of flavor and richness to the cheap sweet thrill of a bit of cake. Besides, he only takes a pinch of sugar in his tea; the amount Isabel has purloined for this dessert would have lasted him months. Deep down, mingled with the shameful pleasure he feels at being remembered today is a seething, roiling rage at Isabel for wasting his sugar. Levi knows he cannot scream at her, not for this, but he desperately wants to.

He furrows his brow and sighs, trying to figure out how to extricate himself from this situation. His silence fills the room until all he can hear is Isabel's breathing becoming shaky and uneven. Clearly, he is taking too long.

"I was just trying to give you a nice birthday," Isabel finally says.

Levi frowns. "I appreciate the gesture." Her upturned nose wrinkles as her eyes fill with tears. "No, please don't cry…" he starts to plead, but she has already run out of the room.

**Twenty-nine.**

The fire is warm and the wine is heady, and that is good enough for him. He gives strict orders that no one is to bother him unless the barracks are under attack and, for the first time in a long time, he feels secure that people will heed his words.

Still, that doesn't stop the girl who sits smiling outside his doorstep like a grateful sentinel, simply content to know that he is enjoying himself.

**Thirty-something.**

It is snowing outside the barracks and he cannot sleep, just like every night this week. Levi has never been able to sleep more than a few hours at a time, but since the deaths of his squad and Hanji's he has been edgier than usual, dozing off for a couple of hours while sitting up in a chair if he's lucky.

When he's unlucky, his body simply drops from exhaustion and he can't rouse himself from his dreams, and so for six or eight or twelve hours he watches the deaths of everyone he has ever liked. He strolls through the forest, coming upon the unnatural inverse curve of Petra's spine resting against a tree, the broken bodies of Auruo, Eld, and Gunther. He sees Nifa's head explode before his eyes in a fountain of gore. He hears Farlan's screams as the life is crushed from his body. He holds Isabel's severed head and remembers the exact sickening weight of it in his hands, the look of her terror in her glazed-over eyes.

As with every other problem in his life, Levi has a method to combat it: when he cannot sleep, he walks. If he is wide awake, he runs. He keeps moving until his muscles protest and his brain screams for him to stop, and then he collapses in that chair and thinks of nothing until sunrise. By his estimation, it is nearly two o'clock in the morning; if he does not tire within the next half hour, he needs to start running. Levi wonders whether the crunch of his boots in the snow will alert anyone to his doings. If asked he will gladly volunteer what he is doing, but he would rather not have anyone intrude on his time. He can think of a few Survey Corps members who would try to ingratiate themselves with him in the middle of the night.

Levi's breath comes out in puffs of vapor as he trudges through the snow, his mouth quirking into a smile as he watches the tread of his boots leave impressions in it. He walks for a few steps with one foot directly in front of the other, making an unbroken straight line of footprints. The crunch of another set of boots in the snow snaps Levi from his frivolous concentration and he whips his head around, trying to discern from where the footsteps are coming. He leaps back into the shadows next to a nearby building, then peers out as he sees a dark figure creeping from shadow to shadow.

He frowns; it will be too easy, he realizes, to immobilize the intruder. Part of him hopes for a vicious fight, something that will drain the electricity from his nerves and allow him to rest for a few blissful hours, but he is used to not getting what he wants. So he creeps around the side of the nearest building — Barracks C, if he recalls correctly — and finds himself behind the intruder as planned. He charges, his booted feet nearly silent in the snow, and knocks the person down, twisting their right arm behind their back as he digs one knee into their spine.

"Captain!" comes a familiar low, breathy voice. A solid body struggles beneath him, nearly pushing him off, but he holds fast.

Levi tries to see who is beneath him; all he can see is black hair atop a tan Survey Corps jacket. He lifts himself up just high enough to turn the person over and replace his knee on their stomach; when he does, he is greeted with a grunt that is muffled by a thick red scarf. "Mikasa?"

"Please get off of me, Captain," she says calmly. Her voice sounds a bit labored, no doubt due to Levi's knee pressing into the hard muscled wall of her stomach, but otherwise she looks as though nothing is amiss.

Levi scoffs and gets off of Mikasa, then leans down and grasps her right hand, roughly pulling her to her feet. "What are you doing out this late?" he asks.

"I was going to the bathroom, sir," Mikasa replies.

He narrows his eyes. "The latrines are on the other side of camp."

Mikasa, to her credit, refuses to admit her obvious lie. "I was running an errand for the squad."

"And what was this errand?"

"It's a secret, sir."

Levi does not speak; instead he glares at her, sure that the narrowing of his steely eyes tells her all she needs to know. _Do not add insubordination of a superior officer to your list of offenses, soldier._

Mikasa sighs, her mouth tightening just long enough for Levi to know that she would not have given this information willingly save for his unspoken threat. "The squad got you a gift for your birthday. I was to leave it in your quarters as a surprise."

"And how'd you get roped into this?"

"Wouldn't you send your best soldier for the most difficult mission?"

Levi snorts. "You got caught, soldier." He gives her a sidelong glance as a smile flickers across his lips, then disappears.

Mikasa looks away from him, brushes an imaginary patch of snow from her pants. "I thought you would still be taking tea with the Commander. A fatal miscalculation."

"Near-fatal."

"Sir?"

"Tomorrow, you owe me 50 laps after calisthenics. I should give you three times that."

Mikasa gapes at Levi for a moment, long enough for him to notice the way her skin seems to glow ethereal blue-white in the moonlight. She composes herself, then straightens into a tight salute. Before she speaks to him, she bows her head, conveniently shielding her eyes with the black fringe of her hair. "Thank you, sir. The gift is over there, if you'll allow me to get it for you. I, uh, dropped it when you stopped me."

"Permission granted."

Mikasa walks fifteen feet or so away; Levi watches her crouch down in the snow and retrieve a small cardboard box, which she hands to him. It feels rather light in his hands, and the snow-soaked cardboard is starting to dissolve on one side. He pries the lid open with his fingertips and rests it beneath the box before peering in to see what his squad has gotten him.

Inside the box there is a white cravat along with a fist-sized burlap pouch tied with a leather drawstring. He nudges the pouch open and feels a familiar gritty texture: starch. More precious than gold sometimes, it seems, but the squad has managed to scrape enough coin or contraband together to get him enough to clean his new cravat for a few weeks.

He tells himself it is the biting cold stinging his eyes when they start to fill with tears. "Tell them that they have my gratitude. I hope I can continue to inspire your respect in the future. Thank you." He places the cravat and sack of starch back in the box and realizes there is something else beneath the white tissue paper. Something dark and soft. Levi starts to nudge the paper away from this unexpected gift.

"Let me help you with that," Mikasa says as she watches Levi try to juggle the box and its contents. She reaches beneath the tissue paper and pulls out a square of what looks to be cloth. He looks at her expectantly as she unfolds the gift, revealing a long scarf in nearly-even blocks of black and dark green.

"I made some mistakes on it," she blurts out. "It's warm, though. I tried it on."

"People will think we're twins," he snorts.

Mikasa's eyes widen as she hands the scarf back to Levi. "I apologize, Captain. That wasn't my intention—"

"It's fine. Thank you. Now get back to your bunk or you're back up to 150 laps tomorrow."

"Yes, sir. Thank you. And, um, happy birthday."

"Now, Mikasa," Levi says, and watches her sprint back to the barracks. With one hand he loosely drapes the scarf around his neck. Mikasa was right; the scarf is warm. He smiles to himself, then wonders whether he should go easy on the squad during training as thanks for their generosity or whether he should be extra tough just to keep them on their toes. Levi yawns, snuggling into the soft wool that rests around his throat, and decides he'll sleep on it.


End file.
